Public Statements

Recommending that Attorney General Eric Holder Be Found in Contempt of Congress

Floor Speech

Ms. BUERKLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for his steadfast work on behalf of truth in trying to get to the bottom of Fast and Furious.

Mr. Speaker, Syracuse, New York, in the heart of my district, is roughly 2,500 miles from Rio Rico, Arizona, where U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was tragically shot and killed by an AK-47 assault rifle that the United States knowingly allowed into the hands of a suspected gun trafficker, yet every time I'm home, it is the issue first and foremost on the minds of my constituents. I listen to their calls, to their emails, and at our town halls. They want to know what happened, who knew what, and when did they know it. They ask me, they ask Washington, they ask the Department of Justice: How could the United States Government, the pillar of hope and freedom, have allowed for this, for one of their own representatives, one of their own good guys, to be so helplessly gunned down by a suspected criminal?

Mr. Speaker, I'm embarrassed to say that after 562 days, I still don't have an answer for them.

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Ms. BUERKLE. Mr. Speaker, I ask: Is this the hope that Americans are supposed to believe in out of the supposedly most-transparent government in the history of our Nation?

It is my hope, Mr. Speaker, that the district court judge will see through the Attorney General's contempt of Congress after it is passed in the House today. However, we must not be mistaken, even if the Attorney General is prosecuted, the case is not closed. We must not forget that guns leaked through this program claimed lives.

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Ms. BUERKLE. Mr. Speaker, after today's vote, we must continue our efforts to find more answers than there are questions relating to this administration's catastrophic Fast and Furious. The American people deserve to know those answers, and the family of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry do as well.